Italy’s Recent Treasures
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Bunch of Nebbiolo grapes
ripe and ready to go
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A string of recent excellent vintages makes an
Italian offering essential. With increasing focus on
quality and a rise to prominence of a number of
Italian wine makers whose fame has now spread to
Bordeaux and beyond, an opportunity exists to
diversify one's portfolio, not simply by the addition
of a country perhaps less explored than France, but
also with a range of styles so broad as to boggle
nose, palate and mind.
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Italy is a big country. I am not talking
geographically (although its longitudinal extension
gives rise to interesting climatic variation), rather I refer to its
complexity in a wine sense. True to its identity
(that of being a (relatively) recently unified
entity), Italy offers an almost incomparable
multiplicity of aromas, tastes and vinous forms.
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Bowes Wine Italian offers are not designed to be
exhaustive. I see no need to send out speciality
offers of Barolo vintages, or mailings that include
the details of numerous Chianti Classicos. What we attempt to
do is find outstanding examples that will showcase
the brilliance of which this extraordinary country
and its vineyards are capable and bring those wines
to our clients in a reasonably succinct format.
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The Producers and Wines
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Azienda
Agricola Morella
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Australian oenologist Lisa Gilbee and her husband Gaetano Morella run this estate
in Manduria, Puglia: the
"heel" of Italy. Some years ago, Lisa (who trained at
the famous Roseworthy
College in South Australia) became fascinated by the
undervalued but very old vineyards in the south of
Italy and, shortly thereafter, found a 5 hectare
block of Primitivo, the
vines of which were between 35 and 70 years old.
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The plants themselves are bush vines, planted on
terra rossa soils
supported on a limestone
bedrock. We're just a couple of kilometres from the
sea here, so the heat of the south is tempered to
some extent by the maritime breezes.
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Primitivo is a story unto
itself. A few years ago, some bright spark decided to
explore the history behind that classic Californian
variety, Zinfandel and, more specifically, whether it
had any existing relations in Europe. Soon thereafter
someone pointed out that it was, to all intents and
purposes, the same as Primitivo and the Americans
became rather upset when the Italians started
labelling their Primitivo
wine as Zinfandel, something now allowed under EU
law.
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Then Carol Meredith got involved. Meredith was a
scientist at Davis College who developed an interest
in genetically fingerprinting grapes to find out
something of their origins. Her findings were that
both Zinfandel and Primitivo are genetically
identical to a variety called Crljenak
Kastelanski that is native to
Croatia, from where both had migrated. Please do not
telephone requesting a guide to the pronunciation of
Crljenak
Kastelanski.
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Quote: "The wines this Australian oenologist makes
from primitivo are so
deeply rooted in the territory and reflect it so
profoundly - despite being conceived and made in a
very modern mould - that we can only stand and
wonder." Gambero
Rosso
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Azienda
Agricola Galardi
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We're in northern Campania here, not far from the
border with Lazio and inland.
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The reputation of the Galardi family is substantial
and well earned. They make but one wine on their 10
hectare estate, commercialising 10,000 bottles of
Terra di Lavoro every
year.
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The wine is a blend of Aglianico and Piedirosso, two grapes
indigenous to southern Italy, both of high quality.
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Terra di Lavoro has been
awarded Tre
Bicchieri - the top award -
from the Gambero
Rosso, the Italian wine guide,
for the last 6 vintages, including the 2006.
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Fattoria
La
Valentina and Azienda Agricola Inama
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Stefano Inama is
something of a god in the Veneto, where he makes some
of the finest white wines of Italy in the form of a
string of Soaves (now I write this, it does look a
bit comical; true, nevertheless. We've offered them
in the past, so it must be).
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In the late 1990s, Stefano became interested in doing
something further south and teamed up with one of the
finest producers of Montepulciano (the grape, not
to be confused with the town and wine in Tuscany) in
the Abruzzo: La Valentina (not to be confused
with Valentino, another top-notch producer in the
Abruzzo. Baffling, ain't it?!).
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Together, they purchased a 4.2 hectare vineyard at an
auction in which they were the only bidder. No one
else wanted this rather dilapidated site. Inama and Valentina, however, could see
its salient qualities clearly enough: south facing
and at 400 metres altitude, the vineyard was planted
with the Africa clone of Montepulciano; "Africa" because
the small-berried bunches resemble a map of that
continent.
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Now the vineyard is left to its own devices. There is
little weeding, no feeding. Yields are low. The fruit
concentration is self-evident in the end wine. Is
this as good as Montepulciano gets?
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Quote: "…very pure expressions of Montepulciano…" Robert
Parker
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Renieri
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The Castello di Bossi, home to Marco Bacci, owner of the Renieri estate in Montalcino
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Marco Bacci's been busy.
He has pushed his family estate, Castello di Bossi, to the forefront of high
quality producers of Chianti. He has also planted and
now started cropping vineyards in the Maremma on the west coast of
Tuscany (and where I originally met him, on a hill
surrounded by his nascent vinelings, with the sea away in
the distance), where he produces wine under the label
Terre di Talamo. And now
he's exploiting a large (128 hectare) estate in Montalcino.
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Marco made his own fortune manufacturing jeans for
the company Diesel. We have offered his wines before.
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Argiano
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The Argiano estate and
vineyards in summer
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This is the first vintage at Argiano to be made by Hans
Vinding-Diers. Hans's
family own the Graves Châteaux Rahoul and Landiras in Bordeaux and, to
further his wine making nous, Hans has worked all
over the world, making wine at estates as diverse as
Tyrells in New South
Wales, Rustenberg and
Finlayson in South Africa, The Royal Tokaji Wine Company in Hungary
and Canale in Argentina.
So he knows one end of a destemmer from the other. To
cap it all, Hans's cousin is Peter Sisseck, owner of Pingus in the Ribera del Duero,
a wine that is now the most expensive in all Spain.
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Among the changes Hans has implemented here is to
lower fermentation temperatures, the result of which
is an emphasising and lifting of the wine's
aromatics.
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Mascarello,
Giuseppe e Figlio
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The Monprivato
vineyard and the villages of Castiglione Falleto and Seralunga
d’Alba
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That Nebbiolo is one of
the great red grape varieties of the world is an
undisputed fact. At one time linked to Pinot Noir,
now simply compared to it, residing, as it does, in a
similarly lofty stratum of the vinous firmament,
Nebbiolo is one of those
rare varieties that can succeed as a mono-varietal
i.e. unblended with the juice of another grape. Like
Pinot Noir, it has the uncanny ability of sucking up
terroir through its root system and passing it
through into its fruit, giving wines that are very
indicative of place.
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The Mascarello family
have had their own estate in Barolo since the late
1800s, previously running the estate of the Marchesa di Barolo.
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The family owns the Monprivato vineyard - one of
the top 10 sites of Barolo - in its entirety.
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Quote: "Today's younger generation of high-end
producers speak with great reverence about Mascarello…Twenty years
ago, Mascarello's
signature Barolo Monprivato was one of the most
expensive Barolos on the market. Then the new-age
style became dominant during the 1990s and the estate
languished in perception, but not
quality…Monprivato
is one of the handful of Italian wines than can hold
its own with the best being made anywhere in the
world." Robert Parker
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 Another shot of the
celebrated Monprivato
hillside (best miximised
for full effect!)
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